Betty Leigh Verbeke

This last week or so has been very interesting.. lots of contrast!  Lots of things to talk about!

First, I have been staying in Cedar Park, in my parent’s home.  While they were visiting my sister in California, I was watching their dog, May.  (They got back on Sunday.)  I ordered my textbooks (!!) to be delivered to their house because where they live in relation to where I live (South Austin) is about 45 minutes of driving time and I knew I would be in Cedar Park when the semester started.  (My classes are in Central Austin.)  I am still waiting on two of my books to come (I have three out of five), so naturally, I am staying in Cedar Park until they arrive.  Staying in my parent’s house brings back a lot of feelings from when I used to live with my parents.  Some positive and some negative.  Of course, it is easier to focus on the positive and ignore the negative, but the negative is still there.  I am working on this.  And soon enough my textbooks will arrive and I will go back to my apartment.  Another reason why I am staying with them instead of driving back and forth is because I just got new car insurance with Progressive (!!) and they have a snapshot program where they monitor your driving for 30 days and will lower your rate based on your driving history!  I want to save money.. car insurance is expensive!  Weird, I just got major deja vu!

Second, I have been searching for a new job because I feel I am ready to move on from the one I have had for the last 15 months.  I have not yet found a new one, but awesomely enough, I have been making more money at my current one the last few weeks!  Wouldn’t it be nice if I found a new job where I made more money and it fit well with my school schedule?!

Third, I am well into my second month of no drugs or alcohol!  It is going great!  I love the clarity of mind!  However, my “detox” of food has taken a different route.  I have many positive associations with doing drug and alcohol detoxes.  I have done them many times, for a few months at a time.  I really, really enjoy the contrast.  My relationship with food is a different one.  I have had many negative associations with food in the past.. and that is just silly.  Food is delicious, and good for you.  All food is energy.  About eleven days into my meat, veggies, and fruits only meal plan, I was having strong cravings for other foods.  I immediately began associating these cravings with negative feelings, like guilt and gluttony.  Why?  That is no fun.  I like having a positive relationship with food, so I stopped my meat, veggies, and fruits only mean plan and started eating whatever I want again.  I am much happier because of it!  No matter what I eat, I associate it with positive energy and positive thoughts.  Who cares if I have toast with jam for breakfast instead of a grapefruit?  I like both!  I don’t have to limit myself to one over the other.  They are both equally healthy because they are both giving my body energy to burn.

Fourth, my classes this semester are awesome!  I was disappointed because the Friday before classes started I received an e-mail from ACC stating one of my classes had been cancelled due to low enrollment.  I really wanted to take three classes this semester, but whatever, less stress.  The classes I am taking are fantastic and reading-intensive anyways!  I have five books for two classes (four for Philosophy and one for Business.. did I mention I rented all five of my textbooks for under $140 thanks to chegg.com and textbooks.com?)!  I love reading and learning new things!  My Philosophy of Ethics class is off the freaking chain!  Haha, I love it so much!  Philosophy is one of my favorite subjects.  I love reading about all the different philosopher’s ideas about life and how and why it is the way it is.  So fascinating!  My Business Principles class, so far, has been a refresher of my other business courses I have had in the past.  This is great because I am still waiting on my textbook for this class.  I can’t wait to learn new things about the business world!  I am so very grateful I am still in school!

Fifth, I love my new hairstyle more and more!  It is such a change from the super long hair I used to have.  Plus, some person has a gorgeous wig now made from my lovely locks thanks to Locks of Love!  Haha.  There are so many positives with cutting off my hair!  I get so many compliments!  Who doesn’t love being flattered?!  No one, that’s who.  (And I have been asked out on a few dates!)  It makes me feel more my age and more confident with my self-image!  I like getting up and styling it instead of just putting it up like I was doing my long hair!  Short hair for the win!

Sixth, I am so in love with my new roommates!  Molly is a great girl!  She is so innocent and different from most of my friends!  She is a new proud owner of her very own floral company, Magnolia Design and Events!  So inspiring!  Our apartment always has fresh flowers in it!  A week ago she did two sorority events and it was so fun to help her create the arrangements for the rush banquets!  Also, I love that she appreciates my business advice!  She comes to me for my opinions on her business and her designs and it is so flattering that she really wants to know what I think and takes my thoughts into consideration when making her decisions!  My other roommate, Tiffany, is awesome!  I think we have a lot in common and we have good conversations about life and such!  I am really enjoying getting to know her!  Plus, both my roommates are clean and put up with my super organization!  Haha.  And the apartment is coming together in such a unique way!  We are all putting our personal touches on the decor and it is making an interesting look!  The other day I put up a star-shaped hanging lamp (a recycled gift that Jessica and Kelly got from Jessica’s mom, who then gave it to Kelly and Josh, who then gave it to me, haha) above our bar and it looks awesome!

Seventh, I love working out and feeling healthy!  I can’t wait to get back to my apartment gym!  My parents have an elliptical machine and a treadmill, but I find looking out over the apartment pool while working out much more enjoyable than staring at a blank wall.  I appreciate my apartment gym so much more now!

Eighth, I am so grateful for my life and everything in it!  There are so many things I could list!  I have been keeping a list of things I am grateful for in one of my notebooks and I love referring to it!  There are so many positive things going on in my life!  I so enjoy the contrast so I can really appreciate all of what my life has in it!  Wow, this post really lifted my spirits!  I can see my mood get lighter from the top to bottom of what I just wrote!  Can you see it?  Love it! <3 <3 <3

Meal One: Grilled chicken breast seasoned with Italian seasoning, cracked sea salt, and cracked black pepper, paired with lightly steamed broccoli seasoned with cracked sea salt and cracked black pepper.

Meal Two: Grilled sirloin steak season with cracked sea salt and cracked black pepper, with a side of lightly grilled sliced zucchini seasoned with ground cumin, cracked sea salt, and cracked black pepper.

Meal Three: Grilled orange bell pepper seasoned with cracked sea salt and cracked black pepper.

Meal Four: Grilled chicken breast seasoned with Cajun seasoning, cracked sea salt, and cracked black pepper, served with lightly grilled asparagus seasoned with cracked sea salt and cracked black pepper.

Meal Five: Grilled shrimp seasoned with cracked sea salt and cracked black pepper on a bed of baby spinach leaves seasoned with cracked sea salt and cracked black pepper, all topped with fresh squeezed lemon juice.

I love having new stuff to rave about!  Things have been so much more than positive lately, I don’t even know how to express the amount of gratitude I have toward this universe and my life!

To start, I have been sober for almost a full month now (minus the medicine from getting my wisdom teeth removed)!  Taking a break from alcohol and the like has given me a form of mind-strength that I have been wanting to make stronger!  And now that my mind is clear, I plan to clear my body with a month-ish cleanse of fresh food.  Veggies, fruits, meats, teas, and maybe some bread every now and then, but that’s it!  I have done these many times, referred to as “diets,” but it is really just a fun and healthy challenge, if that.  My mind has so enjoyed a break from stimulants and I know my body will so enjoy a break from processed fatty foods!  It isn’t like I eat them all the time, but I will not be eating them at all for a month or so.  Also, I am going to continue my sobriety through this process!  Two months of being clean is going to be amazing!  During this last month, I have been so inspired and have had so many amazing and diverse dreams!  I have been so happy and have had so many “ah ha” moments!  There have been so many random (well, in actuality, not random at all) perfect happenings!  It seems like every moment I find something new to be grateful for!

Here are some of the new (and old too) things I am grateful for:

-I paid off my car over a year ago, but the title is officially just under my name!

-New car insurance!  I am now insured with Progressive!  They are a great company and have fantastic rates and customer service!  Plus, they have this thing called the Snapshot Program where I plug a speed-reader into my car (it does not have GPS, it only reads my speed and the time of day) for thirty days and I could save up to 30% on my current rate!

-I bought a cute new duvet cover (pictures to come!) and am looking for a nice bed frame to go with it!  It adds so much color to my room!  I have been sporting the classic black and white look for about four years now and it is time for a change!  And along with the new bedspread, I purchased some amazingly soft 400 thread count sheets!

-New patio furniture!  I have a nice glass and iron table and am looking for some cute chairs to accompany it!

-I am going to be starting a new job soon!  I am actively looking for one, but I know it will come any day now!

-I had the sink replaced in my bathroom!  It no longer leaks water!  Woo!

-Donating things to Goodwill!  It feels good to de-clutter!

-My new short hair!  It is such a different feeling and look after cutting off about eleven inches!  I love it and I love all the compliments!

-Classes are starting in twelve days!  I am so freaking excited!!!  I love learning so much!  I am so stoked to be going to the Rio Grande campus this semester!  I am so glad I am taking three classes this term instead of two!

-Speaking of school, I finally decided to have French as my language of choice for my International Business degree!  (My idea right now is that I will be moving to Canada when school is finished!  What a change that will be!  Woo!  The future is so exciting!)

-My amazing family and friends!  There is always something going on that is new and inspiring and builds more and more love into the relationships I have with them!

-While on that subject, my friends Jessica and Kelly have The Popular Podcast which is so fun and so them!  By helping support them (by joining the TPP fan club), I receive these super sweet postcards every month which are hand-decorated and personalized!  As you can see, I am hanging them up to frame the window in my room!

-Before I moved into this apartment, my friend Marissa gave me these beautiful crystal wine and sherry glasses!  I personalized them by adding a little wire (left over from my wire moon) and a bead!

-I found this gorgeous Italian glass dish at Home Goods which now holds potpourri in my living room!

-I have an awesome idea for making a clock!  Can’t wait to actually put it together!

-These amazing Salvador Dali prints I have hanging in my bathroom!  These are from the photo shoot for his piece called Human Skull Consisting of Seven Naked Women’s Bodies; my favorite piece.  Dali is so inspiring!

-I am picking out some Egon Schiele prints to hang in my living room!  Photos to come!

-This cool art piece came together by recycling different projects!

-My life and the abundance and flow of everything in it!

<3 <3 <3

I love how some projects can be recycled or shifted into another project!  When I was framing Kaytee’s picture, I bought a cheap frame to use the glass and was going to toss the rest.  I am so glad I kept forgetting to take it out to the trash-bins!  Later, I was working on a different project using a magazine, cutting it into strips, rolling them into little spirals, and gluing them together to make a random pattern.  I wasn’t satisfied with the way it was turning out, so I broke it apart.  Once it was broken into random chunks, I thought it would look cool like that just hanging on a wall, so I hung it up!  It did look pretty cool, but it was missing something.  Then I thought of the frame, and it fit perfectly around what I had hung up!  It was so awesome!  This is the result of the two projects combined:

Neat, right?!  It is pretty large and hangs facing the kitchen.  <3

Meal One: Rice cake, Tina’s natural local honey, and blackberry jam. Yum.

Meal Two: Brown rice, broccoli, shredded carrots, red peppers, onion, cracked black pepper, cayenne pepper, and Jalfrezi curry sauce.

Meal Three: Lasagna noodles, venison sausage meat, Laughing Cow light garlic and herb cheese, baby spinach leaves, cracked black pepper, Italian seasoning, and garlic salt.

Meal Four: Multi-grain tortilla, avocado, shredded carrots, baby spinach leaves, and roasted garlic and peppercorn dressing.

I did a little guest blogging for Miss Rubyyy Jones, one of the fabulous bloggers I follow.  These were my answers to her questions:

The Love Game:

1) What Do You Love Most About Yourself?
Physically: my blue eyes, my hands, and the astronomer’s placement of freckles and moles on my body.
Internally: I’m intelligent, positive, witty, creative, independent, and passionate.

2) What Did You Love Most About Your Last, Not Latest, Lover
Not sure what you mean by “last, not latest,” but his body. yumm.

3) What’s T First Song That Comes To Your Head When I Say… Love Song!
Billie Holiday’s – They Can’t Take That Away From Me

4) What Colour Is Your Light?
The yellow-pink of baby rose buds.

5) What Lights (Cheers) You Up, No Matter What?
Smiling – it will eventually force you into a good mood, no matter what.  Every time.  Also, thinking about things I am grateful for or that warm feeling of love that makes your spine melt.

6) How Do You Bring Light To T World?
I am creative with art and poetry and love to share these things with the people in my life.  Also, I am positive and good at raising people’s spirits higher with rational thoughts, not fluff flattery.

7) 3 Words To Describe T Way You Love
Passionate, sensual, and phenomenal

8 ) Which Symbol Represents Love For You?
The equality symbol = and the traditional heart <3

9) What Word Do You Use For Light?
“Positive aura” would be the closest thing to “light”

10) Write Your Own Version… “All You Need Is ____”
I don’t think that the saying “All you need is love” needs to be changed, except maybe adding “universal” or “all encompassing” between the “is” and the “love.”

My Take On Love & Light:

Love is something that can remain undefined by the masses.  It is a feeling that is personal, only defined by the individual.  My love is universal and I would love for all love to be universal.  To me, there is no bias in love, no exclusions, no race, or sexual orientation.  Love is a feeling that can come from anything at any time.  Light is a positive aura.  It glows from within us.  It is our soul seeping through our pores at our highest moments.  Light can constantly change color and strength, encompassing different emotions.

Three Sentences To Describe Myself:

I am a young adult living a life of love and intellect in Austin, Texas.
I love to create, read, learn, explore, and share my experiences with others.
My love is universal and all encompassing.

Thank you Rubyyy Jones for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts with you and others!

This is a piece of art my beautiful, talented, intelligent, wonderful friend Kaytee did for me back in 2009.  (Gah, I miss her.. can you tell?)  It is of the Ennis House by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Kaytee and I share a deep, deep love for FLW’s work. One of my fondest memories of our relationship is (after staying up all night) going to the UT Architecture Library and flipping through FLW books for a few hours.  <3  The reason I am posting it here is because 1) it is a great piece of art and 2) I bought this frame from Ikea and used two panes of glass to give it an industrial look.  I think it is a nice contrast.  :)

“The Story Of Junk” by Linda Yablonsky

To be frank, this is a story about heroin addictions and dealings (and other drugs too).  From reading it, I can partly grasp why so many artists have died young from using.  Although it is simply and very well written, filled with dry humor and different forms of love, I would not say it is an easy read.  At some moments I felt almost uncomfortably intimate with the character’s lives.. maybe because I’ve been in similar situations.  But in all honesty, I really loved this book, I like the way the author wrote it and I am so grateful I decided to read this while being on a sobriety binge.  It makes me very happy with my decision to be sober.  Now here are some damn good quotes for you:

“‘For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.  There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.’”

“Time stops.  There’s no sound anywhere, no blood rushing in my ears, no sign from God, just heroin seeping through my pores.  I need a bath.”

“A quiet descends, dark as the night.”

“While other drugs work to alleviate pain, excite the mind, or otherwise trick the senses, heroin plays with the soul – or whatever it is makes a person uniquely appealing and distinguishable.  Like an enveloping shadow dissolving day into night, it sneaks across your vision and tries to put it out, whatever that joy is by which you live, it creeps inside and pushes you down, making you smaller and smaller, a tiny flame burning down.”

“They remind me of the way Kit plays guitar, how the sound creeps over your body and under your feet, inside your bones and out your mind.”

“Who is this sitting in my skin?  That D, that devil D, it got in my life and it got in my mouth and threw itself over my senses.  It thinks for me, it breathes for me, it fucks for me.  Master and servant, it lives for me.  It lives.  It has no passion, except for me.  Everything I want, it gives me, but it doesn’t give enough.  I want that devil to die.  But how do you kill a devil?  There’s no part of you that doesn’t belong to it.  Everything you do to it, you do to you.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t remember him.  He seemed like the sort of person who would stay in my mind, the sort with a predilection for morbid travesty.  He carried wallet-sized photos of himself modeling his favorite trash: macho motorcyclists, country bumpkins, tarts with big hair, sequined gowns, and hairy chests, all disheveled, some bloody.  Posing was his hobby.  He liked the look of pools of blood.  Otherwise he was just another guy with a straw up his nose and a pocket full of Valium.”

“‘Where the artists go, the world follows,’ he would tell me.  ‘Always watch the artists.’”

“His war stories were are little far-fetched but his long bony penis always seemed to wear a smile.”

“It set her apart, like her voice, a precision instrument marred by a consumptive cough.”

“Her voice trailed off, her eyes staring into the distance.  They were brown and set wide apart, so deep I was afraid to look into them.  At their bottom was one giant slice of grief.”

“The sound washed over the hall in waves, electric arpeggios sailing over sudden squawks and harmonic bleats.”

“It’s not easy to describe this euphoria – a sublime nausea, a flushed meeting of mortal and immaterial all at once, a leap beyond fate, a divine embrace. Heroin gives the impression you’ve gained a level of self-knowledge closed to other pursuits, and the moment you recognize the place where you stand, it blots you out as if you’d never existed.  Nothing in the world can hurt you then.  Nothing can touch you.  And nothing can satisfy your hunger for more: more love, more pain, more sex, more excitement.  More more.”

“His right knee is bouncing off his chair like a proton lost in an atom smasher.”

“‘Money is love in action.’”

“You buy, you mix, you weigh and measure; you bag, trade, and sell.  It’s a business like any other religion: same dependence on faith and ritual, same promise of deliverance, same foundation in fear.  Same flow of tax-free cash.”

“The dark circles under his eyes are black as coal, his face a mass of competing sharp planes.”

“At school my friends ate ‘lunch meat,’ whatever that was.  Talk about suspicious.”

“Someday you’ll thank me for this.  It bugs me.  What is he – a fortune-teller, or a cop?”

“‘It doesn’t matter to me if you believe in God.  I want you to believe in yourself.’”

“The most important thing happening in our culture is drugs, that’s what I say.  Drugs rule the world, because drugs rule the mind, and drugs are the law of the body.”

“[...] I admit.  ‘I see the news on TV.’  ‘Don’t watch,’ she says.  ‘It’s not real.’”

“The city’s full of them, drugs and dicks, they chase you, and that’s the truth.  The search for bliss never ends.  There’s no better high than rapture, except the ability to sustain it.  Each return to the spoon or the straw holds that promise, or that threat.”

“If I had a prayer, I’d say it.  If I had a heart, I’d beat it.”

“[...] doing what our bodies tell us, dressing in each other’s skin – the skin of the High House of Heroin, in the mythical Land of Grim.”

“She makes pain seem almost desirable.”

“How powerful must be a substance that turns otherwise well-behaved, levelheaded, hardworking professionals and loving sons into two-bit hustlers, liars, and thieves with disgusting personal hygiene and no sense of humor?”

“She had to fly all the way across the Atlantic with her eye hanging half out and now she’s feeling vengeful.  In certain circumstances vengeance is a girl’s best friend, better than diamonds ever were.  Maybe not better than heroin.”

“I load up another spoon, take another shot, this time in one of my usual places.  Bingo, a rush – not of chemicals but ideas.  My head floods with stories, characters, speeches. I envision an entire scenario, beginning, middle … I’ll know the end when I come to it.”

“[...] her eyes cold as the air.”

“He smiles.  His mouth is small but his lips are full and inviting.  His hair curls around his head like thick black smoke.  I like his eyes.  They’re steady and open, happier than the abandoned, bashed-in look you usually see on a junkie.”

“She moves up the stairs unbearably slowly – she could be visiting Planet Jupiter instead of me.  Is she two hundred pounds or ninety? [...] She turns through the kitchen into the office, a frail bird who’s lost her wings.  Her black hair hangs over her ears in sodden strings, her dark eyes showing almost no whites.  The large pupils swim in their place unfocused, unable to rest.  Her olive skin’s a urinous yellow, her long nose brims with doper’s drip.”

“Her pupils look large enough to spill from her eyes.”

“The minutes tick by, each a nail in his coffin.”

“Every time I open the door, I feel a shadow cross my soul.”

“The water rails against my skin like pellets of thin steel.”

“My tongue feels bloody.  I’m biting it.  My eyes swim in my head.”

“We’re going to carry the dope in our intestines, packed tight in knotted condoms.”

“A secret smile sneaks across my face – my private face, the one I never show the world, the one I keep under the skin, where this life can never betray it.”

“Ten hours?  Ten hours in a Thai bus with five ounces of heroin hanging out my ass?  The thought stones me to silence.”

“His handsome face twisted up like a pretzel, anger wound up with dismay.”

“Whoever said heroin keeps you warm must have lived in the tropics.”

“I feel like a long Russian novel, full of epic, tortured passion and masochistic need.  In the architecture of indifference that frames the modern world, I’m a lump of forbidden clay, a cave turned inside out, petrified, hollow.  Junk doesn’t fill it, money either.  It just sits there in the cave and digs it deeper.  No wonder heroin’s called Down.  It sinks you.”

“I could be Styrofoam, the way I feel.”

“[...] he gurgles, his voice a simmering venom stew.”

“I can feel the life draining from his hand like dripping paint.”

“I nod, a terrible black cloud.”

I am so grateful (for):

I got my wisdom teeth out!

I get my stitches out Wednesday!

I found new car insurance!

My parents!

My relatives!

My friends!

My roommates (new and old)!

Meeting new people!

Inspiration!

New pens and pencils!

Job searching!

Classes are starting in 3 weeks!

My short hair!

Taking pictures!

My apartment’s pool and gym!

Food and water!

Contrast!

Sunshine and rain!

Clean laundry!

Being responsible!

Being independent!

Having desire!

Being so privileged!

Books!

Poetry!

Art!

Music!

Theatre!

Design ideas!

Shopping!

The internet!

Changes!

Naps during the day!

Things that smell good!

Memories!

Honesty!

Sarcasm!

The Onion and The Chronicle!

Being sober!

Lucid dreaming!

Lists!

Being grateful!

Feeling good!

Love!

& so much more!

<3